


the shards of my heart

by euphemea



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Black Eagles Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Self-Loathing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-25 04:47:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22230355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/euphemea/pseuds/euphemea
Summary: It’s the most honest thought Felix has had about the war in a long time, raw against his throat and blistering hot, threatening to spill emotions he buried and left behind when Fhirdiad burned. His regret has eroded over the years, a canyon once roaring with rapids of anger and conviction, now sluggish with only a trickle of memory.Sometimes, the tide of the past washes in and floods him, leaving him as battered and broken as the bodies of Dimitri and the other Blue Lions left interred in the mass grave near the Tailtean Plains. He’s always shoring up the dam that holds it back.Seven years after the end of the war, Felix and Dorothea visit a new museum in Enbarr.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Dorothea Arnault & Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 17
Kudos: 61





	the shards of my heart

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [Elliot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scatteringmyashes) for helping me beta this! 
> 
> This is an emotionally heavy piece, please mind the tags.

Dorothea leans against Felix’s shoulder, her arm vine-like around his, and she crinkles her nose as her hair meets his old, tattered coat. Felix shoves down the urge to throw her off.

“Come on, Lixie! We’ve got all afternoon!” she says, irritation creeping into her voice’s singsong. 

Felix never told her about the childhood nickname, but she started calling him by it one day and won’t stop. It’s aggravating. 

It’s a brand of nostalgia he can’t afford to indulge in—memories of a time when he thought he knew how to be a good friend, how to be loyal, how to love. Once, he thought he could one day be the greatest right hand since Kyphon.

Dorothea continues, wheedling. “Spend some time with your dear friend who’s taking the day off from her busy schedule to see you while you’re in town!”

Her idea of “spending time together” is apparently visiting the new history museum they’re staring at, dedicated to the War for Reunification. It’s an elaborate, grandiose piece of repurposed architecture; it used to belong to some Adrestian noble-or-other who defied the Hresvelgs during the Insurrection of the Seven. The former residents were donors to the performing arts, Dorothea tells him. The building is decently large, nice enough to look at. Felix supposes that the façade could be considered ornate and well-crafted, if one cared about that sort of thing.

Banners hang proudly above the entrance, their loud red and black touting Fódlan’s reclamation from vile, ancient beasts and the tyranny of the Church. They promise a grand tale of finding freedom after a thousand years of subservience. To the side, there’s a note of the museum’s dedication date—very soon, within the month—and that the Emperor herself will be in attendance. 

The museum is not open, and a few haphazard scaffolds still decorate its exterior, but Dorothea can get them in anyway—past fussy, cough-ridden, old men organizing the building’s “collection” and arguing in the entryway. 

The Emperor gave Dorothea special permission to visit as _inspiration_ for her operas. Or something.

Felix doesn’t see the point of wallowing in the past or in glorifying the cost of war. 

After such a bloody, drawn-out struggle with the former Church of Seiros (and the more recent conflict with Those Who Slither in the Dark), _certain other people_ ought to have learned those lessons too. 

Dorothea, of all people, should know, no matter how soft she’s gotten since returning to life as a diva. He distinctly remembers her mourning the deaths of their former classmates, both enemies and allies alike.

(Even Sylvain, who she’d never stopped complaining about, who had never stopped annoying Felix, not even after Felix had switched classes. Not until he had put his sword through the other man’s—)

“No. Absolutely not.” Felix rips his arm away, grimacing in disgust. “I’m not wasting my time with something as pointless as _reminiscing_ about the war.”

Dorothea’s gaze drops, her shoulders sagging with them, and the playful mask crumbles. Her voice is faint against the rumble of city noise. “Felix… This is hard for me too.”

“Really? Fantastic. Then pick something that’s less pointless and depressing.”

“Please… I need to do this.” She looks him in the eye again, fierce through her tears. “We can’t honor the dead by choosing to pretend they never existed.”

“They existed. Fine. Acknowledged. Let’s do something else.”

Felix turns to walk away, preferably as quickly as possible. Dorothea lunges. “Felix Hugo, you _will_ come with me to this museum.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“ _No._ ”

“ _Yes._ ”

Felix scoffs. “I’m leaving. I’ll see you at the opera tonight.”

“Felix… please.” Her voice is vulnerable again. “If I can’t face this with my closest friend—who, might I add, is _never around_ —how can I ever?” 

Dorothea exhales shakily, gathering herself. A handkerchief is conjured from… somewhere, and she carefully blots her eyes with it. A twist of helplessness clenches around Felix’s heart. The distantly familiar despair renders him just as weak as it did during the war.

“We owe it to them to make sure their stories are told, the right way,” she says, voice carefully measured. “To make sure no one forgets the cost of what we had to do. So no one forgets who and what we had to sacrifice to know peace.”

She takes his hand, stroking against it in small circles with her thumb.

“They deserve their place in history, not just as those who refused to give up the Church even in its worst hours, but as our friends.” She sighs, raising her eyes. “They were our friends, Felix. We can’t ever forget that.”

“I’m not forgetting them,” Felix says. “I won’t forget my friends.” 

“Then come with me!” 

“No. I can’t—!” Felix tears his eyes away, staring into the cavernous gloom of the museum’s open entrance. “I can’t face them.” 

It’s the most honest thought Felix has had about the war in a long time, raw against his throat and blistering hot, threatening to spill emotions he buried and left behind when Fhirdiad burned. His regret has eroded over the years, a canyon once roaring with rapids of anger and conviction, now sluggish with only a trickle of memory. 

Sometimes, the tide of the past washes in and floods him, leaving him as battered and broken as the bodies of Dimitri and the other Blue Lions left interred near the Tailtean Plains. He’s always shoring up the dam that holds it back.

“We’ll do it together.” Dorothea squeezes his hand. “Please, Felix? For me?”

“It’s better not to dwell on the past. What’s done is done.”

“Felix.” She stares at him, her judgment carving its way into his skull.

Felix sighs, the weight of years of avoidance threatening to crash into him all at once.

“Fine. But we’re not staying long.”

“Yeah… yeah, okay.” She smiles, soft and careful and wobbling at the edges. “Just a loop through to make sure everything’s right, then we can go.”

Felix nods curtly. He waits for her to lead the way, following as they duck around still-bickering curators into dimly-lit, musty halls. 

Dorothea doesn’t hum, uncharacteristically silent and somber, her eyes fixed to the floor. Her heels click rhythmically against stillness—the tranquil, brittle veneer of peace the museum epitomizes threatens to cave under the weight of their presence.

The first hall is empty save a series of large plaques, carved with countless inscriptions. Upon closer inspection, names, numbering in the thousands. A record of the fallen, their deaths drops in the sea of blood that washed through Fódlan. For every name known, two more were never identified—never claimed, only to be remembered by tally marks etched into a single tablet shadowed against the far wall.

Dorothea trails past the nearest panel, her hand ghosting along the engraving.

“How pointless,” Felix mutters, crossing his arms.

She turns slowly to him, a hard set to the line of her mouth. “Disrespecting those who gave their lives, Felix?”

“Carving their names won’t bring them back,” he says. “There’s nothing to be gained from the worship of the dead.”

“Maybe,” she says, her eyes drifting past him to scan the room. “But it’s a reminder that they existed at all, isn’t it? That they fought for something. I don’t think that’s ‘the worship of the dead’.”

“They fought for a war that someone else believed in more. How many of these people would have chosen to overthrow the Church of Seiros on their own?”

“I don’t know. I wish I could say I do… but I don't.” Dorothea wanders toward another wall, regret and mourning heavy in her eyes. “These people had friends… family… And they all went to war with us. Because Edie needed to do the right thing.”

Dorothea pauses for a long moment, caught in some thought that Felix can’t hear. She turns, gaze piercing as she pins him with a critical look. “What about you? Are you saying you regret fighting in the war?”

The question winds him, and he clenches a fist to keep his face passive. She doesn’t know how close that question hits to home, and if he has his way, she’ll never need to. 

Felix makes a disparaging noise. “Of course not. It was the right thing—it was necessary. It’s what the continent needed.” Felix’s voice drops. “But people do horrible things in war. Mindless, endless killing… all for the wrong reasons.” 

There’s a beat. The question of regret hovers in the air between them.

“I can’t say I disagree.” Dorothea laughs, quiet and tinged with bitterness. “Did you know, I still sometimes wake up thinking I’m dirty and covered in blood? That we have another battle to fight tomorrow.” 

She looks at Felix and he feels twenty again, listlessly caught in limbo, promising himself over and over that he’s fighting for freedom from cruel, empty ideals. Biding his time as Edelgard waits for Byleth to come back. Felix can still feel the fog, the desperate, blind faith that the path he’d chosen was the right one—because if not, what did the lives he’d taken servef? 

“It’s been almost seven years, and I can still feel that fire in Fhirdiad scorching my feet.” Dorothea’s voice cuts through his thoughts. “The war never really leaves you, does it?” 

(The disappointment of Rodrigue’s frown in Arianrhod is still carved into his eyelids, his disbelief drowned in red where Felix’s sword had met his body. Felix knows exactly what Dorothea means.)

“No. It doesn’t.”

She takes his arm and her pristine, manicured hands tremble against his threadbare sleeve. “Let’s keep going, shall we?”

Felix nods.

—

The other rooms are, for the most part, more of the same. More somber remembrance of the Empire’s dead, more reminders of grueling years of stalemate, more cold criticism of the wanton destruction wrought on Faerghus by the people who should have been its protectors. 

There are newly-commissioned paintings depicting Edelgard arriving to battle with the sun at her back, casting light against a dark and hellish Tailtean Plains, her enemies a throng of monsters and demonic faces. Felix doesn’t look to see if he’s depicted among the generals flanking her. 

A small bedroom on the second floor has Fhirdiad’s burning painted onto its walls. The Immaculate One stares coldly down from the ceiling, its fangs dripping with blood. It hovers, its wingspan enveloping the room, a shroud over the doomed city.

One particular portrait titled “King of Delusion” sets Felix’s teeth on edge. It’s a grotesque depiction of a bedraggled, blond man holding a lance of bone, hulking and menacing as his subordinates grovel at his feet, the shadows of Demonic Beasts lurking behind them. He has his teeth bared, and vengeance and hatred run wild in his eyes. The burn of his twisted and inhuman expression glares out of the painting, dousing Felix in cold fury. 

Felix doesn’t examine the other faces, refuses to see the empty space to the man’s right, won’t acknowledge the burning grief sinking through the pit of his stomach.

He stalks away, leaving Dorothea to chase after him and hiss at him to slow down.

She catches up to him in a final chamber filled with weapons, retired from their time during the war. A case at its entrance displays twin battered swords: a broad, heavy weapon from Faerghus and its lighter, ornate Adrestian companion.

He laughs scornfully as her steps come to a halt behind him. “Told the right way, was it?” 

“I’ll talk to Edie about getting that removed. I don’t know how it even got commissioned.”

“Don’t bother. It’s what the world wants to believe, isn’t it? That Edelgard saved everyone from the Church, from the Leicester Alliance’s council, from Di—.” Felix clears his throat, the sound loud and false. “From the boar.”

“She did save Fódlan.” Felix can hear in the frown in Dorothea’s voice. “It wasn’t easy, and the war took… so many… but it was the right thing. You said it yourself.”

“Is it really saved?” He paces away, taking in the collection of weapons. Some of these were once truly magnificent pieces of craftsmanship. The Sword of Moralta is probably among them, if he cares to look for it. Felix had heard that it was found somewhere in the wreckage of Arianrhod. “You haven’t seen the north. People are starving worse than before the war, and the people displaced from the cities are only now finally settled.”

He pauses, turning his head back toward Dorothea. “There’s no one left to take care of them anymore.”

_We killed them all_ lingers unspoken in the air. 

Dorothea, thankfully, doesn’t mention that Felix himself was once intended to take care of the people of Faerghus.

He might have been nobility, but Felix had never been taught to lead, and the boy who believed in chivalry had died that day in Duscur with his brother. He’d died again as he watched his best friend turn into a monster on the battlefield. He’d died a final death when the Immaculate One rose, determined to raze his home to the ground for the sole sin of being there when the Imperial Army arrived.

Felix turns away again, resuming his examination of the weapons. “Edelgard doesn’t have the resources to manage them, not from so far away, not when so many still resent her.”

“She’s doing her best,” Dorothea says, voice small. “Reconstruction isn’t easy.”

“I know. I’m not saying it is.”

It’s not easy, but Edelgard should be doing more, living up to the promises she made about creating a new government that could bring up the impoverished, including the ones far from the seat of her power. 

Even if Felix doesn’t know how she can possibly begin to accomplish those lofty, empty goals.

Felix stills, a movement from a half-covered case catching the corner of his eye. He pulls back the heavy tarp, breathing sharply as it falls away to reveal a familiar, unearthly sight.

Jagged bone stares up at him, mostly still save for the occasional wriggle, off-white and pale and stained with hundreds of years of blood.

He stumbles back, the fragments of the former Relics eerie even without the unsettling glow of power thrumming through them. They shiver out of time, an unseemly ripple traversing from one end of the display and back, the sight as transfixing as it is revolting. The Crest stones that were once embedded in them are gone, only the bodies of the weapons remaining, some more shattered than others.

Near one end, an especially enthusiastic piece that might once have belonged to the Lance of Ruin, as cavalier and bombastic as its former master. Beside it, half of Areadbhar, its placid exterior hiding treacherous power, its rare pulses slow and rhythmic. At the far end, Freikugel and Failnaught, mostly intact, few signs of the destruction wrought on the others. 

He doesn’t see the Aegis Shield. 

Edelgard must be keeping it elsewhere; it’s not a spoil of war, not a symbol of power that tried to oppose the Emperor and failed. There’s a space between Areadbhar and Lúin where it belongs—the gap small and unintentional and not large enough for the shield to rest—and _it’s not there_.

It lost its place twelve years ago. That’s all it will ever be now: the shield that couldn’t protect. A failed successor running away from its duty, deluding itself into the belief that it was working in the service of something greater. So ineffectual that it can’t remember the faces it was supposed to save, the lines blurry and washed out in its memory.

Felix exhales, ragged, the cracks in the dam caving, emotion bursting through its seams. His former classmates have been dead and gone for years; Felix’s blade pierced through more friendly hearts than he can count. The battlefield isn’t a place for sympathy and pity, but the landscape of Felix’s mind has never stopped burning with the fires of war.

There’s a stinging in the corners of his eyes, a weakness he shed at thirteen when his father’s callous words became the catalyst he needed to light a pyre on the dregs of that poisonous nectar called affection.

He needs to get a grip. Drowning in guilt is useless. What’s past is past.

The Felix who loved died long before Dimitri did, and the animal wearing his skin doesn’t have the right to carry his grief.

“Felix? Everything okay?” Dorothea asks, her steps shuffling closer behind him.

Felix grunts. “I’m fine.”

She stops beside him, peering down into the case. “Are these..?”

“Yes.”

Dorothea blinks. “I didn’t know they still had them.”

“I didn’t either.”

She lightly threads her fingers through his. They’re both trembling now. 

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Just fine. Fuck off.” 

Felix’s words are accented by a faint sniffle.

“If you say so.” Dorothea sighs. “But, I’m here if you need someone to listen.”

“I’m _fine_.”

“Okay, I get it! Why don’t we—”

The barrier fractures.

“I can’t help thinking—!” A rough exhale. “Di— the b— _he_ was so blinded by the need for revenge that he never considered that he was choosing everything that had caged and controlled him as much as it hurt Edelgard.” Felix shakes, his hand tight around Dorothea’s. He tries to look at her, but her face is a blur. “It was all just slash, kill, fight—straight to the end. He turned into a monster, and then he dragged all the others down with him. Now all that stands are the ruins they left behind.”

Felix takes a shuddering breath, inhaling sharply to hold the gate in place, bracing it so that no more regret leaks through. Dorothea gently runs her spare hand through his hair in small, soothing strokes. 

“It was never wrong to side with Edelgard and fight for the good of Fódlan, but… I know, I just _know_ —! There must have been a way to save him. To save them.” A single tear escapes, slowly winding its way down the side of his cheek. 

Felix can’t seem to control the rambling now that it’s started. He’s thirty, and he’s just as powerless as he was at thirteen. “It’s too late now. It’s all in the past. It’s not something to dwell on, but I keep replaying those years, wondering if there was another way.” He shudders. “The blood never washes away.”

Dorothea squeezes back, breaking Felix from his reverie. “I miss them too. Every day. Every _single_ day, I wish we could be as carefree as we were before the war.”

She rights herself, pulling away and carefully looking at him. Felix continues to stare blankly at the Relics. 

“Let’s go, okay? I think we’ve seen enough,” she says, not unkindly. “I’ll talk to Edie about that painting. We can go now. We’re done, just like you wanted. There’s a tea place nearby, we can go there.”

Felix nods, numb, not trusting himself to open his mouth. He doesn’t need to spew forth more pointless, nostalgic garbage.

They make their way back to the entrance in silence. The old curators are gone, the door no longer open to the outside. They exit, the heavy oak door slamming behind them with a finality Felix can only wish it could close on the war.

Instead, the sound echoes, hollow, as it joins the clattering memories Felix has to seal away.


End file.
